📍Israel destroys the seeds of the Palestinian People

The monstrous cruelty of the Israeli regime conducting its genocide in Gaza has been there for the whole world to see. One aspect of their treacherous conduct has not been so visible as others.

On July 31 2025, the Israeli Zionists destroyed the Seed Bank in Hebron which housed the seed varieties of the local foods that the Palestinians eat. These seeds were collected and stored by Palestinian farmers to ensure the food security of their people. 

The Seed Bank was the result of many years of hard work to collect and conserve the genetic diversity of Palestinian crops and the community knowledge of that diversity to achieve food sovereignty and keep native seeds in Palestinian hands. It was this food autonomy and food sovereignty that the Israelis wanted to destroy so that Palestine would lose its food and its future.

 

⌲ Look at South Korea!

As we ponder over our abysmal failure to either increase or improve our forest cover, let us look at what South Korea has done to restore and build its forests. Remember the Comptroller and Auditor General of India told Parliament in August 2026 that the Government had failed to meet its targets to increase and improve forest cover in India, by nearly 98%. A 98 percent deficit? spoken plainly, zilch had been done. 

Now to Korea. During the 35 years of Japanese rule in Korea the country’s forests suffered severe and deliberate destruction due to aggressive commercial logging and extraction of timber for use by Japan during the two world wars. Worse was to follow when what forests were left were to face the depredations of the Korean War. By the end of the wars, almost 80 percent of Korea's forests were destroyed or severely degraded. 

To the credit of the war ravaged South Korean government, it made forest recovery a national imperative, initiating a centrally coordinated afforestation campaign in 1973. Through large-scale planting, public engagement, and intensive post-planting care, forest cover and quality steadily improved. By 2020, the overall volume of all living trees in South Korea’s forests had increased nearly 30 times from its degraded state. That is a stupendous achievement! 

South Korea borrowed an implementation-management strategy from industry used for problem solving and continuous improvement. It involves four iterative stages, Codified as PDCA: Plan → Do → Check → Act

1. Strategic planning (Plan)

2. Implementation (Do)

3. Performance evaluation (Check), and 

4. Corrective action (Act)

It was used successfully in reforesting South Korea. It’s a template anyone can use. Is the IndianGovernment listening?

📌 The tree canopy has a secret ally in cleaning up atmospheric pollution.

So far, we knew that the leaves on a tree removed atmospheric carbon dioxide by photosynthesis. But in a path breaking study published in 2021, scientists showed that bacteria living in the bark of the Australian paperbark tree consume atmospheric methane, thus doing a great job of reducing this polluting gas from the atmosphere. 

This interesting discovery was followed by another in 2024 which revealed that such methane guzzling bacteria also inhabited the bark of other tree species found in the UK, Sweden, Panama and the Amazon. 

But this was not the end of the story, yet another study published in January 2026 showed that this methane eating property was really quite widespread. Bark bacteria in tree species across the world were mopping up polluting gases, gobbling not just methane but also huge amounts of hydrogen and carbon monoxide from the air. 

These recent discoveries that trees function as comprehensive air scrubbing filters add even more weight to the importance of forests in keeping our ecosystems healthy. In light of this, #deforestation becomes an even more dangerous exercise.

#ClimateScience #Microbiology #SaveOurForests #Nature #CarbonCapture #ClimateChange #GlobalWarming

📍Supreme Court favours the Great Indian Bustard!

 

In a petition filed by the conservationist M.K. Ranjitsinh to protect the critically endangered Great Indian Bustard (GIB) and Lesser Florican from dying by hitting overhead power lines, the Supreme Court delivered a judgement in favour of protecting the birds. What a welcome step!

 

The ruling recognized that the "right to be free from the adverse effects of climate change" is an autonomous, self-determining right. That this right derives from the two fundamental rights granted in the Constitution of India, Article 21 and Article 14.

 

→ Article 21 grants every individual the Right to Life and Personal Liberty. The Supreme Court bench read this to say that  A stable, healthy climate is an essential prerequisite to enjoying a meaningful life.

 

→ Article 14 grants the Right to Equality. The Supreme Court read in this case that Disproportionate climate burdens on vulnerable communities violate equal protection of the laws.

 

The Great Indian Bustard locally called Godawan is the state bird of Rajasthan where it is considered a symbol of pride and grace. It is revered by local communities, especially by the nature loving Bishnois. The Godawan is one of the heaviest flying birds in the world and is a flagship species of the arid and semi-arid grasslands of the Indian subcontinent.

the news: https://www-barandbench-com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/www.barandbench.com/amp/story/law-firms/view-point/judicial-responses-to-climate-change-constitutionalising-right-to-clean-environment-and-protection-against-effects-of-climate-change?amp_js_v=0.1&_gsa=1#webview=1&cap=swipe 

📍It's raining Jargon.

It's raining Jargon. Close on the heels of Heatflation, comes Climateflation,. This definition refers to a permanent rise in the cost of living driven by the impacts of climate change and the economic responses to it. 

Coined by the economist Isabel Schnabel in 2022, the term portrays how environmental breakdown and extreme weather turn temporary price spikes into long-term inflation.

Holding up Climateflation are three junior flations:

👉 Carbonflation: Costs resulting from impacts of heatwaves, floods, and droughts that destroy agriculture and infrastructure.

👉 Greenflation: Higher costs associated with transitioning to renewable energy and retrofitting old infrastructure

👉 Fossilflation: price shocks in fossil fuels driven by external dependency, geopolitical conflicts, and energy bottlenecks.

📌 RTI Law Turned On Its Head!

(from the archives)

A combination of intimidation and mindless application of the letter of the law threatens to dissuade citizens from putting the RTI Act to use. And politicians are only happy to offer solutions that further dilute the law's purpose. Suman Sahai and Swati Gola note examples from Chhatisgarh that point to the need for a program for rights literacy.

Recently, BBC News carried a feature reporting the prohibitive cost of obtaining information through the Right to Information (RTI) Act in India. A farmer in Chattisgarh who had asked for information on paddy purchases in his area was given a bill of Rs.1,82,000 for costs that were allegedly incurred for photocopying the official documents relating to the purchases. The documents filled an entire room. In another incident, a resident of Bilaspur district, Chattisgarh was told to pay Rs.75,000 for information he had requested on the positions available for schoolteachers.

The village council official of Bilaspur said that they did not have the money to provide information to people. In Chattisgarh, a person who demands information has to pay Rs.2 for every photocopied page of official documents. Authorities say that ever since the law was passed, the poor have risen to demand information from the government but the government does not have money to supply it. The Chief Minister of Chattisgarh has stated that well-to-do people are using the poor to get information free from the government (the fees are waived for the poor below the poverty line). He urged that the law be changed to allow the officials to examine whether the requested information is useful for the person asking for it.

It is not hard to see that the applicant was seeking the status and availability of the positions for schoolteachers. What, then, motivated him to photocopy the application forms of 9000 candidates, and bill the petitioner for this mindless act?

These incidents should not have happened. They are geared to defeat the purpose of the RTI Act, which is essentially to introduce transparency in governance and to check corruption. These actions can be attributed to one of two reasons. The first, a deliberate attempt to intimidate those seeking information so that misdeeds and corruptions are not exposed. The second, which is far more likely: that there is lack of familiarity with the law and no application of mind to the provisions of law in order to enable people to access information.

• A huge bill has been handed over to a poor farmer whereas it is clearly provided under proviso to S. 7 (6) of RI Act that the fee shall be reasonable and information should be provided for free to persons who are living below the poverty line. Thus the act of State Public Information Officer is in clear contravention of the provisions of the law.
• The information officer is required under S. 7(3) of the RTI Act to intimate the applicant how much it will cost to prove the information alongwith the calculations made to arrive at the amount. He is further required to inform the applicant of his/her right to review the decision regarding the amount of fees charged or the form of access provided as well as the particulars of the appellate authority. Instead of applying his mind, the SPIO has handed over an enormous bill running into lakhs of rupees to a poor farmer. This is in clear violation of the legal provision.
• The law gives ample discretion to the Central or State Public Information Officer under S. 7(9) to assess whether the form in which the information is sought would disproportionately divert the resources of the public authority. Accordingly the SPIO should have sought clarification from the applicant as to what particular information he/she wished to have. He should have facilitated the applicant’s request for information and intervened if the information sought was unclear and would result in bulk copying of documents. Instead of providing a stack of photocopies without application of mind to its relevance and which resulted in avoidable expenditure of public resources, the applicant should have been guided and informed of the expenditure and be given the alternative to inspect the files and file notings and then take the photocopies of only the most relevant portions.
• The claim of the official that the government has no money to provide the information is inadmissible and holds no ground. The cost of photocopying an official document is charged at Rs2/- page, which is not a reasonable amount. Photocopy machines are already installed in government departments and can be used at nominal cost. Even if the photocopying is done at a commercial establishment, the costs vary from 50-75 paise per page at the most.

The proposal of the Chattisgarh government to seek changes in the RTI Act that will allow officials to determine whether the information sought is ‘useful’ to the applicant is absurd, and could be judged to be malafide. The RTI Act was legislated after a great deal of debate and discussion within civil society and with officials and government departments. The result is a consensus legislation, which has at its core good governance to enable development from the grassroots up in a functional democracy. Instead of trying to derail the Act, the Chattisgarh government would do well to educate itself and train its officials to interpret and implement the law so as to achieve its goal.

Providing a stack of non-relevant information and handing over a bill close to two lakh rupees is not only a waste of public resources but appears to be a tactic to deny information and deter others from seeking information from the government. If the intention of the government official was infact to provide relevant information, it is not hard to see that the applicant was seeking the status and availability of the positions for schoolteachers. What, then, motivated him to photocopy the application forms of 9000 candidates for the post, and bill the petitioner for this mindless act?

The objective of the RTI Act is to improve transparency in public working but the incidents mentioned above reveal the resistance of the bureaucracy to open their functioning to scrutiny. They are unwilling to provide information, and when they have to they resort to creating hurdles by senseless application of provisions of the Act. These incidents underline the great need for a public information campaign to engender a rights literacy program so that the public can become aware of its rights and have full knowledge of the legal provisions through which it can exercise its rights.

This article appeared in India Together on 13 June 2006 -https://indiatogether.org/letterlaw-rti/

📍World Rivers Day (27 Sept 26)

Given the way nature is being degraded in the name of “development”, a movement has begun across the world claiming that Nature has Rights like people do. Included in this movement is the backing for the Right of Rivers. 

The Universal Declaration of River Rights says that rivers have :

• The Right to flow unhindered along their natural course.
• The Right to maintain their ecosystem functions and the health of their habitats.
• The Right to maintain and preserve the diversity of their flora and fauna
• The Right to be protected from pollution, and
• The Legal Right to be restored from their damaged state.

On this World Rivers Day, let us affirm the Right of Rivers and commit ourselves to the protection of this life giving resource without which survival on this planet would not be possible.